The Night Sky April

Equipment you will need Because of the darkness of our forest locations, you can see many Vulpecula wonders of the night skies with your naked eye, although your eyes will need a good 20 minutes to adjust to the darkness. Any bright lights, such as that from your torch, will set them back again. You can reduce this effect by putting a red filter on your torch. Equipment worth investing in includes:

• Binoculars – cheaper and easier to carry than a telescope. Look for ones with glass lenses. • Camera – to capture that fantastic star scene forever • Tripod – essential for use with your camera • Telescope – worth investing in for the really committed stargazer • Google Skymaps – a superb free app, available for Android and iPhone. You point your phone towards the sky and it shows you the constellations and identifies the stars using inbuilt GPS Corvus Getting started – your first 5 constellations Ophiuchus to spot • Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) has been used by sailors since ancient Sextans times to locate the fixed-point Pole Star and navigate home • Leo (the lion) is it a lion, as the Greeks decided? Or is it K9 from Doctor Who? • Cassiopeia (the queen of Aethiopia) is one of the easiest constellations to locate and looks like a huge W, almost directly overhead • Cepheus (the king of Aethiopia) is one of 48 constellations identified by 2nd century astronomer Ptolemy. Imagine a child’s drawing of a house, complete with roof • Orion (the hunter), with belt and sword, is perhaps the most Lupus famous constellation – and one of the few that actually bears some slight resemblance to its namesake

Stargazing facts for kids • You can see the International Space Station without using binoculars, and you can track it moving across the sky • The sun is 300,000 times bigger than earth and 93 million miles away. If you could catch a plane to the sun, the journey would take Vulpecula Ophiuchus Corvus Lupus Sextans 20 years Identified in the 17th A large constellation Its name means Lying between As a constellation • We’re more connected than you might think. The gravity of the sun century and located formerly referred to raven or crow and, Centaurus and this covers a rather in the middle of the as Serpentarius, its originally only seven Scorpius is Lupus or dim, sparse region of and moon bring about the tides in our seas Summer Triangle name is from the of its stars were the wolf as it’s more the sky but it lies near • Footprints and tyre marks on the moon from the Apollo 11 mission asterism, Vulpecula Greek meaning counted. However, it commonly known. the ecliptic which will stay there forever – there is no wind to blow them away is known as the ‘little ‘serpent bearer’ actually contains 11 On its western causes the Moon and • How much do you weigh? If you weigh 50kg here on earth you fox’ stars visible to the border are two some of the planets would only weigh 19kg on Mars because of lower gravity naked eye. galaxies containing to pass through it for some of the hottest brief periods of time. stars in existence.